


27:  Dessert

by light_source



Series: High Heat [27]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M, San Francisco Giants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-22
Updated: 2011-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- I brought dessert, says Tim quietly, when he sees Zito’s hand, and then the rest of him, emerge from around the edge of the partly open door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	27:  Dessert

**San Francisco  
February 2008**

The property agent’s blonde chin-length hair reminds Tim of a helmet - it’s as brittle and polished as the rest of her, her petite frame uniformed in a navy suit with gold-coin buttons.

\- This place is pre-war, and kind of quirky, she says, opening the airing closet and pointing to the back, where he can see the louvered wooden slats that let in outside air. - It was rewired last year to bring it up to code. Did I mention there’s two parking spaces? Unusual for a place in this part of the city.

They make their way down the narrow two-landing staircase.

After three days of house-hunting, this is the first place Tim’s seen that he’s actually liked. The ultramodern condos the agent had shown him in the Dogpatch were chilly and sterile as a morgue, all white subway tile and stainless steel. The Marina’s close to the Presidio and it’s got good views of the bridge, but it’s expensive and full of annoying fashionistas. The Mission, with its taquerias and low-riders, is actually where he feels most at home.

But for some reason, Potrero Hill, the onetime cattle-pasture, has pulled him back. It’s like a little San Francisco inside the big one, stacked up against the breast of Bernal Hill, green now that it’s early spring. There’s hardware stores and corner groceries, and people still look strangers in the eye on the street.

In the kitchen, while he’s writing a check and signing the lease, she opens the clasp on her purse, which lets out a fragrant puff of perfume and leather. She rustles around in it, pulls out a small manila envelope.

\- I knew you’d like it, she says. - So here’s the two sets of keys, and the codes for the garage and the alarm.

\- How’d you know? he asks.

\- Hunch, she says. - I’ve been doing this awhile. You’re a little different from most of the ballplayers I’ve dealt with. This place is too. Like I said, quirky. In a good way.

She shakes his hand and stands up, snapping her purse shut.

\- And I’m looking for you to get twenty wins this season, she says. She hands him one of her business cards. - Don’t let that Cain boy get past you, Mr. Lincecum. That changeup of yours is awfully good, but he’s got that nasty slider.

Her heels click decisively down the hall towards the front door.

Tim smiles. He’d never have guessed she was a serious baseball fan.

He goes and sits outside on the balcony, and considers his view of downtown, the spire of the Transamerica pyramid glinting silver in the late-afternoon sunlight.

//

It’s Tim’s first-ever Fan Fest, the early-February ballpark ritual that gets the whole Bay Area stoked for baseball season. The yard is strange and familiar at the same time. The clubhouse has been stripped bare but it’s bulging with crowds of fans poking around everywhere, clutching souvenirs, dazed by the noise and the fluorescent light and kept shuffling forward by uniformed security. The players are signing autographs for charity today, and pretty much everyone’s here, except for Correia, who’s off the hook because his wife is having a baby.

There’s a monster-truck challenge scheduled at AT&T for tomorrow afternoon, so the playing field’s buried beneath a foot of topsoil that’s been dumped over tarps to protect the grass. The fans are bitterly disappointed by this; the room buzzes with their complaints. Tim can see why. They were hoping to touch the sacred ground of the infield, toe the rubber, walk the bases, say a prayer on the grass to the gods of baseball.

Tim’s sitting at the end of a long table, Matt Cain in the middle and Zito at the other end, with a dozen Sharpies and a bottle of water in front of him. Cain’s come back from his winter in Alabama looking like a jarhead, his red hair shorn high-and-tight for the new season, and Zito’s gotten around the wear-your-uniform policy by pulling a black cashmere sweater over his jersey.

Zito's sweater is more than a fashion choice; it’s cold in here with all the doors thrown open, and Tim’s put on his fleece jacket and a beanie. Since ten o’clock he’s been signing stuff - balls, Topps cards, number fifty-five shirts, caps, even one little kid’s forehead - and his right hand’s getting tired of inscribing the loopy icon he uses for autographs. He looks up. As the hands of the clubhouse clock creep towards noon, the line of people is still winding out the door, no end in sight.

But his pitching hand’s the least of it.  The bulk of the weirdness comes from people he’s never met before shoving things at him, hooting and squealing and calling him ‘Timmy.’ They’re demanding handshakes and hugs and baby-holding and photos-with. Two girls so far have even asked for his phone number. (He gives them Sergio Romo’s, which he’ s memorized for this purpose.) The smile he’s been maintaining for the last two hours is starting to hurt; his teeth are cold, and so is the tip of his nose.

He suddenly flashes back to high school, when he remembers waiting for the 3:10 bell, every part of his body straining to get out of there.

Out-of-here, today, means a short break for lunch, and then there’s radio interviews till three. At noon, the security guards close rank around the front of the table, cordoning off an escape route, and the three of them push back their chairs to a chorus of protests from the fans who are still waiting. Without looking back, they squeeze through an emergency-exit door behind them that leads to the training room.

As the door whooshes shut behind them, Tim grins in amazement; it’s unreal, like a movie where the beleaguered king flees after delivering a speech to an angry crowd.

Zito leans up against the door, smiling ruefully.

\- I’ll never get used to this, he says. - The intensity of it. _Fuck._ If I took this shit seriously, I’d be in trouble.

\- So far, he says, - I’ve had three marriage proposals, one from a guy-slash-girl who’s probably a tranny. A very attractive one at that - nice legs. And sweet. One girl claims she’s psychic and she’s talked to all my relatives on the other side. And one lady told me she knows I’m actually her son-in-law but her daughter won’t admit it.

\- The weirdest, he continues, - was the guy who wanted a really big autograph, five-by-seven, so he can take it to Brucius at B&B and get it tattooed on his left butt cheek. He’s already got Bonds’s graph on the right one. Tribute to the Two Barrys. He was ready to pull down his pants and show me.

\- Gives a new meaning to the concept of ‘badass,’ says Cain, without missing a beat. Then he twists his round face into an exaggerated frown. - _Oh man,_ he says, - nobody proposed to me.  People just want me to hold their babies. Should I be worried?

Zito shakes his head, grinning. - Grow your hair back, dude. You look like you’re fixin’ to be all that you can be. Or maybe like you’re a new dad who doesn’t have time to comb anything resembling actual hair.

\- It's cause you're adorable, Matty, says Tim.  - They want to squeeze your cheeks.  The ones on your face.

\- No, but seriously, guys, says Cain, deadpan, ignoring them. - We sucked all last year, objectively speaking. What’s it gonna be like when we actually have a good season?

Tim smiles at this, but it’s hard, he’s distracted. Partly because he’s fatigued and a little overwhelmed. But mostly because he’s having a hard time beating back the thoughts that keep pushing to the front of his brain, about Zito in that v-necked sweater, those slightly tired eyes, that soft hair curling above his collar.

//

Zito’s only had one piece of pizza and half an Anchor Steam but he’s already full, his stomach churning from the frenzy of the atmosphere. He looks around, leaning a little to see around Vinnie Chulk’s shoulder, to that place across the room where Tim’s sitting at a table with Bengie and Keiichi and Tyler. Groeschner’s standing on the far side of the table, leaning over the three of them, drawing something on a napkin - probably diagramming muscle groups, he loves to do that.

Zito leans back a little in his chair, remembering to breathe. He tips his head back, laces his fingers behind his neck, and looks hard at the back of Tim’s head. His eyes are stinging a little, and he has to resist the urge to blink.

When, after a few moments, Tim feels the look, turns his head and their eyes lock, Zito shifts his gaze briefly towards the door that leads to the administrative offices.

The talk and laughter in the big room is deafening. Even while they’re complaining about the burden of fame, the guys are clearly enjoying themselves, one-upping each other with outrageous-fan stories and accounts of their off-season exploits. So no one pays much attention when Zito gets up, cardboard plate in hand.

//

\- I brought dessert, says Tim quietly, when he sees Zito’s hand, and then the rest of him, emerge from around the edge of the partly open door.

Of all the rooms in this unlit hallway, Tim’s chosen wisely, Zito thinks - the medical-exam room next to Dave Groeschner’s office has a privacy lock.

Tim holds out a couple of big flat squares of Guittard dark chocolate - Zito’s favorite - that he’s wrapped in a brown-paper napkin. But Zito, who closes the door noiselessly behind him and turns the lock on the handle with his fingers, doesn’t seem to notice.

Then Zito flips off the lights.

\- You don’t know who might come down this hall, he whispers, - and I don’t want to think about someone seeing light under the door.

Tim feels behind him for the edge of the doctor’s desk; in the utter darkness of this windowless room he knows he wouldn’t be able see his hand in front of his face. He tosses the wrapped-up package of chocolate behind him onto the desk, and then he’s free.

//

How it feels to Zito, this time, is like he’s been given the keys to the vault where they keep the truth frozen at absolute zero. No, wait - it’s like he’s closing a no-hitter against the Yankees, and he’s just plunked Alex Rodriguez in the ass for showing bunt.

A-Rod's writhing in the dirt, and the fans are going nuts. For Zito, of course.

Maybe, he thinks foggily, there’s something about Fan Fest that disposes him to hyperbole.

Or maybe it’s the three weeks they’ve been apart.

But Lincecum’s mouth. _Oh,_ breathes Zito softly into his throat, their tongues twining, remembering. As he wakes into this dream, he realizes that not being able to see only makes everything more real. He presses in, untucking Tim’s shirt and sweater and slipping his hands beneath them, and Tim melts, his back loose against what must be the exam table - the paper’s crackling. Zito can feel Tim’s warm lats flexing beneath his hands, his spine bent easily backward over the table by the intensity of their kiss.

Or maybe it’s like Tim’s mouth is a story that Zito’s finally learned to read, and just as Zito thinks he’s got what those words are saying, there’s a strong, warm hand twisting in Zito’s hair and another hand that’s slipped underneath his pants. And now Tim’s unzipped both Zito’s pants and his own, and he’s got them both in hand, and he’s stroking. Zito, remembering where they are, has to stifle the moans that are rising unbidden into his throat.

When Tim suddenly pushes him away with a force that takes him by surprise, Zito's mind is so blurred by desire that he can’t comprehend what’s happening. So he relaxes into it, lets Tim march him slowly backwards, hobbled by the jeans that are looped around his knees. And then the wall seizes him, Tim’s hands are pinning his hips to its cool flatness, and his hands are in Tim’s hair, which is so thick, and so soft.

He’s finally got the answer he’s been looking for, that hot, wet mouth taking him.

//

\- I got ambushed last year, says Brian. – These fans are insane. Did you know that the word ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’? They lie in wait for you and then they _pounce._

After last year’s Fan Fest, driving out of the players’ parking lot, Brian had wound up with a couple of juvenile-delinquent hitchhikers, two fourteen-year-old boys who’d ridden the bumper of his SUV three blocks up King Street till the beat cops had pulled them off. They’d been waiting to get a photo, and then they thought they’d tag along, like they’d seen people do in the movies. Until it hadn’t exactly worked out that way.

\- You’re just pissed that it wasn’t two fourteen-year-old _girls_ , says Tim, and Brian throws a pillow at him.

\- But I got a confession to make, Tim continues, pretending to be penitent - I gave Romo’s number to the girls who asked for my phone number today.  Now that I think of it, he continues - I shoulda given ‘em yours.

\- You little shit, says Brian. -  Brilliant work, that.  Sergio’ll wind up dating two of ‘em. Simultaneously.

Brian and Tim are stretched out on the leather couches in the clubhouse watching the last half–hour of _Top Gun._ Tim’s seen it about twenty times already but he still loves the dogfighting part with the MiGs, and Tom Cruise striding away from his F-14 while the guitar solo blares.

Today, once Fan Fest concluded and the celebrity after-the-fest-guests were dispatched with a few autographs apiece, most of the rest of the team either went home or out for dinner. But Tim wasn’t really hungry, and there didn’t seem like much point in returning to his chilly new apartment, where he hasn’t even bothered to unpack, since he leaves for Arizona on Monday. And anyway, they’re all supposed to go over to Zito’s place in the Marina around ten when the post-Fan-Fest-fest’ll be getting started.

His cell phone buzzes under his hip, and he wriggles a hand underneath himself and extracts it to find a text message. He taps back a text and flips it shut.

\- The Missus? asks Brian, his close-set, intensely blue eyes on Tim. He’s smiling a little. Smug, Tim thinks. Brian likes to push the envelope.

Tim raises his eyebrows and, with some effort, holds the gaze.

 _\- I know,_ says Brian.

\- What? says Tim. He can’t help fiddling with the zipper-pull on his jacket. - What is it that you know, Brian? he asks. - _Tell me._

Now that he can look away, Tim busies himself adjusting the backlight on the remote.

Brian’s silent. Eventually he drops his eyes.

They both turn back to _Top Gun_ , where Maverick is about to make his triumphant landing on the aircraft carrier for the millionth time.

//

The party’s already fully alive when they get there, the lights dim, the smoke thick, dubstep and techno-pop pounding against the closed windows. There are plates of hors d’oeuvres on the low tables and a buffet in the dining room. Pitchers of drinks on the mahogany sideboard sit next to a tub of ice and stacked crates of highball glasses. Zito’s usual cohort of bar and kitchen staff is absent; tonight it looks like the team’s strictly on its own.

Oh. The guys keep going into the powder rooms because they’re doing lines in there, Tim realizes, watching the traffic in and out of the hallway. Maybe that’s why they call them powder rooms, he thinks dizzily. And that’s probably why they’re starting to look more alert as the night goes on, and the laughter and the conversations are getting more intense instead of more laid-back, the way they do when everyone’s just boozing and smoking dope. It’s common knowledge that the team’s usual program of random drug-testing doesn’t start till a week from Wednesday, so this is the guys’ last chance to cut loose before the season starts and they have to behave.

Tim doesn't get the appeal of cocaine, which makes him hyperactive and paranoid. He’s had a couple of drinks, dark red and fizzy, made with pomegranate juice and sloe gin, that tasted like a grown-up version of something from a drink box. But the buzz is wearing off, leaving him just tired, and as he surveys the crowd, he almost wishes they had an early-morning call tomorrow so that everybody’d just go home.

 _\- If I could just lie down for half an hour_ _,_ he thinks fuzzily, _\- I’d be good to go._

He doesn’t really remember how he gets from this thought to Zito’s bedroom on the second floor, where he crawls underneath the duvet and is asleep before he can turn off the light.

//

When Tim wakes, the house is quiet and the lights are off except for an uplight behind the Japanese screen that paints the ceiling with a latticed pattern of light and shadow. He sits up. Zito’s there, pulling his shirt over his head, his hair wild, and as he slides into bed next to Tim, his skin is warm and fragrant, foreign-seeming. He smells like cigarette smoke and booze and something else, not sweet but not sour either - what? Fruit, Tim thinks sleepily, a plum straight off the tree, still hot from the sun, how weird is that?

\- You still have your clothes on? asks Zito. - Tired boy. Let’s do something about that.

As Tim leans forward, his hands on the hem of his shirt, Zito helps him off with his clothes, first his shirt and then his pants. Then Tim collapses back into the pillows, his head aching a little, but his heart beginning to pound. Zito’s not wearing anything but drawstring pants, and the waistband’s slipping down invitingly, doing little to disguise his hard-on.

\- A great party is good, says Zito. - But coming upstairs and finding you in my bed - that’s my definition of the perfect day.

Tim arches his back, stretching, his arms above his head, wrists flexing, a sleepy moan of pleasure at the release of tension escaping from his mouth. Before he can lower his arms, Zito’s leaning over his chest, kissing his nipples. Then he’s straddling Tim, and sucking on them with his hot insistent mouth in a way that brings Tim right back to where they left it in the exam room this afternoon, hard and wanting it.

He never stops, Tim notices through his haze of half-awake desire, as Zito’s dark head bends over him, exploring Tim’s body with his tongue. It’s always like he’s got all the time in the world. And now he’s given himself up completely to Tim’s pleasure. As he feels Zito’s mouth and hand on his cock, working him with that just-unpredictable-enough rhythm Zito knows will drive Tim wild, Tim reaches down and cups Zito’s jaw in his hand, caressing him, wanting to say with his body what he can’t give the power of words.

//

In the morning, when Tim opens his eyes, Zito's already awake, and looking at him, a quizzical look on his face.  His dark eyes are still half-closed with sleep, waiting.

\-  I signed a lease day before yesterday, says Tim, yawning.  - Place in PH.  Right on the edge of the Mission. You'll like it.  It's a little weird, but it's got a great view of the financial district, and I can walk to the yard.  

\- And the best thing about it, he continues, - is there's an extra parking place and an extra set of keys.  For you.

Zito slips one arm around him and pulls him close, so that Tim can smell his warm skin, his sleep-tousled hair, the fragrance of last night's excess already fading into something else, something that belongs only to them.  


End file.
